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Category: science kits

Wednesday, 19 July 2017

08:45 – It was 68F (20C) when I took Colin out at 0700, sunny and clear.

I got a bunch of solutions made up yesterday for science kits. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be labeling and filling bottles–thousands of them–making up chemical bags, small parts bags and other subassemblies, and building finished kits. As usual this time of year, we’ll be hard-pressed finding places to stack the finished goods inventory.

Email overnight from long-time reader Paul Robichaux, with the subject line “You knew it all along I guess”, and a link to this article about the myth of drug expiration dates.

Yeah, I knew it all along, or at least back to the 70’s, when I did activity tests on long-expired antibiotics, many of them dating back 25 years or more, and found that all were at least 75% as potent as they’d been originally and in most cases close to 100%. And these had been stored at room temperature and in some cases without any climate control in barns and so forth. Most of them were agricultural antibiotics, including penicillin, tetracycline, erythromycin, and so on, although some were capsules or tablets intended for human use. Obviously, I could do no safety testing, but there was no reason to believe any of the drugs had degraded at all, let alone become unsafe.

I store our own stocks of antibiotics and other drugs in the freezer, which should quadruple or even octuple their real shelf-lives. In other words, they should be as good literally 100 years from now as they are today.

Red flag to a bull. I spotted this article yesterday, which claims that there are two correct solutions to this math puzzle, but only one in a thousand people will figure out both solutions. I assumed it’d take me about 15 seconds to get both. I was wrong. It took me 22 seconds. The problem was, there are not just two correct answers, but at least three. I say at least, because after getting three correct answers in 22 seconds, I stopped working on it. There are likely more correct answers, depending on how deeply you want to look for patterns.

Interestingly, I came up with the third solution–the one they don’t know about–first, the “difficult” solution second, and their “easy” solution third. (Hint: those solutions are, in that order, 52, 96, and 40.)

More email from Kathy. She works a normal year-round job, but as a teacher Mike gets summers off. After he finishes the second shelf-island, he intended to go to work on repackaging. Kathy asked him not to do that, because (a) she thinks it’ll go better with two people working on it–and she’s right about that, as we know from experience–and (b) she wants the experience of repackaging. She didn’t say so, but my guess is that (c) as would be many wives, she’s afraid he’ll somehow screw it up, or make a big mess, or something.

So they’ve agreed that he’ll instead devote time this week to getting all of the canned/bottled supplies unpacked and arranged on the shelves with the latest best-by dates toward the back, and those shelves labeled with sections for canned meats, soups, sauces, condiments, vegetables, fruits, cooking/baking essentials, herbs/spices, etc. etc. Mike intentionally left a fair amount of space on the island shelving units between the top shelves and the ceiling. He used 6-foot vertical posts, so they have a top shelf on each unit that’s about two feet from the ceiling. That space will be devoted to toilet paper, paper towels, and similar light but bulky items.

As it turns out, Mike isn’t yet finished building stuff in the basement. Kathy is now exchanging email with Jen, Brittany, Cassie, Jessica, Lisa, et alia. To make a long story short, to Mike’s surprise Kathy has decided she’s going to learn to pressure-can. She told him she wanted a heavy-duty built-in table on the wall next to the basement sink, on the other side of the washer-drier. Mike pointed out that she’d never pressure-canned anything in her life, but she pointed out that she now knew lots of women who did, and anyway she’s signed up for a pressure-canning course at the local ag extension office.

Mike pointed out that there’s no range/cooktop in the basement. No problem, Kathy said. She’d use a hot plate or two. That ain’t gonna work, Mike pointed out. You’ll need 220/240VAC to get enough watts/BTU’s to do pressure canning. So we’ll install a second-hand or inexpensive new electric cooktop, Kathy suggested. No room in the breaker panel for another 220/240VAC breaker, says Mike.

Not one to be beaten–something she has in common with Jen and the rest–Kathy then announced that in that case even though it’d cost more she wanted to install a propane cooktop and a large propane tank. That would not only be an excellent solution for pressure-canning, but would give them a completely off-grid solution for cooking and baking. Having been married for quite a few years, Mike knew he was beaten. So he suggested that rather than have him cobble together a working surface that he visit the local building supply store and pick up two or three inexpensive base cabinets, maybe a couple of upper cabinets, a laminate countertop, and a propane-capable gas cook top.

He’ll also call the local propane supplier and order a large propane tank to be installed as soon as possible, with lines run for the cooktop, a space heater, and one terminating near the rear basement door for a tri-fuel generator that they don’t have yet. In consultation with the Prepper Girls, Kathy will take care of ordering a pressure canner and canning supplies, jars, lids, etc. She also asked Mike about buying a dehydrator. As any husband who’s not a complete newbie would in that situation, he replied, “Why not?”

Kathy also mentioned something interesting that she hadn’t told me before. She gets three weeks of vacation, which she normally takes as one week over Christmas and two weeks in the summer, when they normally go on a vacation trip. This year, they decided to skip the vacation trip and devote the significant money that would have cost them to buying LTS food and other prepping supplies. They also cut way back on their monthly cable TV bill and signed up for Netflix streaming to replace the big cable TV package. The upshot is that they’ll be spending more than $100/month less on TV, all of which goes to buying prepping supplies. They have a couple of financially major projects in mind–including a small off-grid solar setup–and need to do a bunch of filling out on various categories including medical supplies, ammunition and perhaps another couple of gubs.

They’re both happy with their new, less expensive entertainment options. They already had Prime streaming, and with Netflix streaming added they are in great shape for stuff to watch. Mike is suffering sports withdrawal, but says he’ll get over it. No word from their kids.

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Tuesday, 18 July 2017

09:21 – It was 66.1F (19C) when I took Colin out at 0650, sunny and clear. Barbara is working around the house and yard this morning, and volunteering this afternoon.

We’re working on building more science kits, which is a lot easier now that the lab/work area in the unfinished part of the basement is again accessible. I spent some time yesterday placing orders for stuff we’re short of: 6,000 650-mg sodium bicarbonate tablets, a kilo of potassium hydroxide, three kilos each of citric acid, oxalic acid, and salicylic acid, and so on. Today I need to make up 10 liters of fertilizer concentrate, which we need for biology kits, another four liters of 6M hydrochloric acid, and so on. Kit sales are running slower than usual for July, but that’ll change any time now.

It’s a great relief to have our house back and clean again. Barbara is happy, so I’m happy.

Email overnight from Kathy. Her Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers have arrived, and her reaction was exactly the same as everyone else’s I’ve spoken with who’s done this: “What have I gotten myself into?” With almost a ton of flour, pasta, sugar, and other dry staples to be repackaged, she and her husband are looking at a major project.

Mike has finished one of the basement shelf-islands and the other is in progress. He plans to finish the second one this week, so they’ll have plenty of shelf space to hold the stuff. They are devoting this coming weekend to repackaging all of their bulk stuff and getting it and all the canned goods shelved.

Mike also picked up four used but clean food-grade 55-gallon plastic drums and faucets for them, along with enough concrete blocks to make stands for them. They don’t have room for them in their food room, but they’ll fit along the wall in the outer basement. He plans to get the faucets installed and get them up on the stands and filled this week. They’ll chlorinate the water and change it out every six months. They figure that’ll give them enough potable water to supply minimal drinking, cooking, and toilet flushing needs for the four of them for three weeks or so or, in a pinch, just drinking water for a couple months.

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Friday, 14 July 2017

08:48 – It was 73.3F (23C) when I took Colin out at 0720, overcast and breezy.

Justin almost finished laying the ceramic tile in the master bathroom yesterday. He ended up one or two pieces short because he ran out of mortar. He’ll lay the remaining pieces this morning and then grout it. So we should have our bathroom usable again by Sunday, after everything has had a chance to dry and set.

While we were moving stuff out of the unfinished area yesterday, Barbara noticed water under the water heater. We’d just had the plumbers out a week or two ago to replace the feed lines, which were dripping. This time, it was the water heater itself. So they hauled a new water heater out here and installed it. I told Barbara I was thinking about disconnecting all our home plumbing and having an old-fashioned well with crank and bucket installed.

We started getting stuff moved back into the downstairs den yesterday. Most of the heavy stuff–bookshelves, sofa, love seat, corner table, and so on–is already in there, although not yet positioned. We’ll spend today getting stuff where it belongs. I’m really looking forward to the unfinished work area and the food storage room being accessible again.

Our busiest time of year for kit sales starts now. We’ve had four kit orders in the last 24 hours, and that will only accelerate as we move toward the crazy period in August and September. For the next two to three months we’ll be shipping kits as fast as we can make them. Mid-July is when homeschoolers start getting serious about getting ready for the autumn semester. After that, things will slow down a bit until mid- to late-November, when Christmas sales kick in along with people getting ready for the January semester.

11:47 – We now have almost all of the furniture cleaned and in place in the downstairs den. Things are starting to shape up. Next, we’ll be hauling books, thousands of them, out of the unfinished area and into the den to get onto the shelves. Barbara will have to spend some serious time getting them all organized and shelved. The only thing MIA so far is the remote control for the downstairs TV, but I’m sure we’ll uncover it as we continue moving stuff out of the food storage room.

I just talked to Justin. I said he must have noticed that we were preppers. He said, yeah, either that or serious couponers. I said I guessed that prepping was pretty common up here, and he agreed, but commented that there was a huge difference between the year-rounders and the part-timers. The former typically have basements chocked full of food and other supplies, while the part-timers seldom have any supplies at all. He commented that most of them go to the supermarket every day and keep literally no food in the house. He also said he’d talked to more than one of them who had no idea how to pump his own gas.

He said that he and his wife kept a couple months’ worth of LTS food on hand for them and their two kids, but that didn’t count their large and easily-expandable garden or his dad’s cattle farm and its 300 head of beef cattle. He said he figured if TSEDHTF they’d all be eating a lot of beef.

So if push comes to shove, the weekenders and summer people will be in a world of hurt. The full-time residents, not so much. So we have our own Golden Horde living a few miles down the road. Not to worry, though. Most of them would have no clue which end of a gun goes bang.

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Tuesday, 4 July 2017

Happy Birthday USA!

09:56 – It was 64.4F (18C) when I took Colin out at 0640, partly cloudy. We’re mostly taking the day off for Independence Day, although Barbara is volunteering at the Historical Society museum from 1000 to 1330 and I’m making up some chemicals for forensic science kits.

I suppose it’s human nature, but I always put off the most obnoxious ones until last. One of those is Kastle-Meyer reagent, which is a concentrated hydroxide solution that needs to be refluxed (simmered) for an hour or so, until the metallic zinc in the flask reduces the bright magenta alkaline solution of phenolphthalein to a colorless (or straw yellow) solution of phenolphthalin (note the different spelling).

The other obnoxious one, for a different reason, is the gentian violet solution used for detecting fingerprints on sticky tape. That one’s obnoxious because it turns everything purple. It’s a very fine powder that wants to go everywhere, and even the tiniest grain–literally one one-thousandth of a grain of sand–is enough to make large purple stains on everything: our skin, the sink, anything it comes into contact with. Fortunately the stain is fugitive. It wears off skin pretty quickly, and any oxidizer (like dilute chlorine bleach) renders it colorless.

As long as we’re making up stuff, I think we’ll make up a test batch of caramel/butterscotch sauce. Barbara used to buy it at the supermarket, but we haven’t had any in the refrigerator for quite a while. Here’s the recipe I intend to try, which was provided by a reader:

⊕ 6 ounces water (0.75 cup; 178 g)
⊕ 12 ounces white sugar (1.75 cups; 347 g)
⊕ 0.75 teaspoons salt (4.3 g)
⊕ 12 ounces evaporated milk (1.5 cup; 192 g)
⊕ 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract (7.5 g)

1. Combine water, sugar, and salt in a 3-quart pan over medium heat. Stir until syrup comes to a boil, about 3 to 4 minutes, then simmer without stirring until syrup is honey-colored, about 6 minutes, swirling to ensure even caramelization. Continue cooking until syrup is light to medium amber, a minute more.

2. Add evaporated milk and reduce heat to medium-low.

3. Stir constantly to eliminate foaming, and simmer until syrup reaches 225F, or for about 3 minutes. Remove from heat, stir in vanilla extract, transfer to a canning jar or similar container, and set aside to cool. Syrup will be thin and runny while hot, but thickens as it cools. Refrigerate the container for storage.

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Friday, 30 June 2017

09:22 – It was 65.4F (18.5C) when I took Colin out at 0620, overcast and drizzling. Barbara got back from dinner with her friend Marcy about 2100. The local ham radio club net runs at 2030 Thursday evenings. I could hear the repeater loud and clear, but it couldn’t hear me, either with the standard UV-82 rubber duck antenna or with the Nagoya NA771 whip. I need to do some work on that.

Frances and Al are stopping by this afternoon. They’re bringing along their Linux desktop system, which I haven’t looked at for probably three or four years. I had it set to autoupdate, but even so it needs a thorough going-over. IIRC, it’s running Linux Mint, but I’m not even sure about that.

I’ll get it set up, probably in the den, and then pull backups to two different external hard drives, and data backups to a couple of DVD-R discs as well. Once I’m sure I have good backups, I’ll do a deep hard drive test and then blow away what’s on there and install the current Linux Mint LTS version and get all of their plugins and software updated.

I’m not too concerned about the hard drives. Spinning disks have failure curves pretty much like incandescent light bulbs–pretty much a Poisson Distribution, with some very early failures, followed by what looks almost like a Normal Distribution for the next few years, followed by a long-tail curve.

Speaking of failures, we had an electronic scale fail yesterday. Barbara was filling agar bottles, weighing each to ensure they got at least the specified 10 grams each. I’d just bought agar from a new source, so I ordered only half a kilo until I could look at it. Nominally, she should have gotten 50 bottles from that 500 g of agar, but she always goes slightly over, so I told her she might get 45 or 47 bottles.

She came to get me a while later and showed me that she already had 45 bottles filled, but still had almost half the original agar left. So I went in and got a spare scale. It turned out she’d been transferring only about 6 grams to each bottle, even though the scale was indicating 10+ grams each. So I pitched the old scale in the trash and immediately ordered two more spares. While I was at it, I ordered another 500 grams of agar.

It’d been a while since I calibrated the bad scale with a standard set of weights. I probably need to put a reminder on my calendar to do that periodically.

Email from Jen. They tried their new NV camera system I mentioned yesterday with and without the supplemental IR LED illuminator. She said it helped some, but it was difficult to tell just how much. Like just about any location east of the Mississippi, Jen and David’s home suffers from some light pollution. They’re rural, but there are enough lights around that there’s some sky glow, which is apparently sufficient to let the low-light capability of their cameras function.

They’re rated at a 100-foot detection range at 0.00 lux, using the built-in IR LED illuminators, but even without the IR they’re supposedly good down to something like 0.01 lux. They waited until full dark and then sent the nephews out to walk around the yard. They were wearing reasonably dark clothing–jeans and such–and they were able to detect movement out well past 100 feet. Turning on the supplemental IR LED illuminator brightened things up a bit, but they really couldn’t tell just how far they’d be able to spot movement with just the built-in IR versus with the supplemental illuminator also lit.

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Thursday, 29 June 2017

08:55 – It was 60.7F (16C) when I took Colin out at 0615, partly cloudy and calm. Barbara is out filling bottles for science kits, which she’ll be doing most of the day. She’s headed down to East Bend, outside Winston, around 1700 to have dinner with her friend Marcy. She should be back mid-evening.

As it turned out, it wasn’t the water heater. It was one of the copper feed lines coming out the top of it. Two guys from Shaw showed up yesterday around 1100 and replaced both the old copper lines with PEX. It took them less than half an hour. They were both surprised that we had a 110V well pump. Neither of them had ever seen one before.

A few minutes after they left, Jay Shaw stopped back with a sheath of paint swatches to show me. He matched the existing paint pretty closely with an off-white color called “cotton ball”. I told him that, fortunately, Barbara didn’t really care about the exact color as long as it was an off-white and a reasonably close match for what was on the walls now.

I ordered 250 grams of reagent-grade (AR) iodine crystals off eBay yesterday. Thirty bucks, including shipping from China. If it weren’t for federal regulations, I could have just ordered it from Fisher Scientific or another US supplier. But that involves an incredible amount of paperwork, so much so that many US vendors no longer sell elemental iodine, and if they do the cost is outrageous.

Understand, I’m not breaking any laws by ordering iodine on eBay. It’s perfectly legal for me to buy it, import it, or possess it in any quantity. It’s just illegal for US resellers to sell elemental iodine to US customers without going through all the regulatory bullshit. I can even sell iodine solutions, as long as I don’t sell more than 30 mL at a time and it’s less than 2.2% iodine w/v. That’s fortunate, because every kit we sell includes a 30 mL bottle of Lugol’s iodine solution, which is 1.27% w/v iodine in a 2% solution of potassium iodide.

For that matter, it’s trivially easy to isolate elemental iodine from potassium iodide, which is completely uncontrolled. I could order a hundred kilos of KI, and no one would blink an eye. And all it takes to convert that potassium iodide to iodine is some hardware store muriatic acid (hydrochloric acid) and a jug of supermarket chlorine bleach. I did that as a demo at MakerFaire in 2008 to demonstrate how futile federal regulations are.

Lisa emailed me an update of their progress. They’re well past her initial goal of food/water/shelter for three months, but are still accumulating LTS food and other supplies. They’re now studying for their Technician Class ham radio licenses in preparation for taking the test in August.

They’ve also stocked up on OTC medications, bandages, etc., but Lisa came across one of my posts about SHTF antibiotics and wants to get some. She said that the source I recommended, aquabiotics.net, appears to be out of business. Their web page is still up, but it’s nothing but a placeholder.

They’re actually still in business, but not on the Internet. PayPal and other credit-card processors have banned them solely because they’re selling antibiotics. The owner, Dave Folsom, is now processing orders solely by email. Email him at dcfolsom@reagan.com and ask for his current price list. Decide what you want, total up the price, and send him a check. I know that’ll probably make a lot of people nervous, but I’ve bought from him twice that way, and each time he’s shipped exactly what I ordered via USPS Priority Mail the day he got the check.

I suggested to Lisa that for the six of them (assuming no drug allergies) she order at least a few courses each of 100 mg doxycycline, 800/160 mg SMZ/TMP, 875/125 mg amoxicillin/clavulanate, and 400 mg metronidazole. And, in case nothing else works, at least a course or two of 500 mg levofloxacin. Stick them in the freezer, and don’t even think of touching them unless the S has really, really HTF and you’re convinced the patient is going to die if you don’t take desperate measures.

More email from Jen. They routinely run readiness exercises every time there’s a three-day holiday weekend. This one is four days, which is better still. They’re starting as of 1800 tomorrow and running their exercise through next Wednesday morning. David is on call for a couple of those days, so he has to keep his cell phone on, but otherwise they’ll be completely off-grid for the duration. No grid power or other utilities, no TV other than DVDs and other local stuff, no Internet (although they do cheat and check email and news sites in case there’s a real emergency), etc. These exercises became routine for all of them a long time back. As Jen says, it’s essentially just a family camping trip at home.

Brittany and her family are also doing a readiness exercise over the holiday weekend. These aren’t as routine for them, yet, because they haven’t been doing them as long or as often as Jen and her family have, but they did get most of the bugs worked out some time ago.

11:15 – I forgot to mention one new thing Jen and her family will be trying out. In past readiness exercises, their main problem was keeping a 24×7 watch, particularly when it was just the six of them participating. So they decided to install an HD NV surveillance system. The system they bought has eight Ethernet PoE 1080P surveillance cameras with IR illuminators, and is rated for 100-foot detection at 0 lux (with the IR working). Those cameras feed into a 16-port DVR that has all kinds of bells and whistles.

Jen’s husband, brother, and nephews spent some time last weekend getting cameras mounted and everything installed. The cameras and DVR have standard Ethernet RJ-45 jacks. They mounted the cameras under the eaves at each corner of the house facing out at 45-degree angles and at the center of each wall, facing out at 90 degrees, and ran pre-made Ethernet cables to each camera. Jen didn’t want a bundle of Ethernet cables coming down into the house proper, so they declared the main floor utility room to be their comm center and ran all the cables back there.

They were a bit concerned that the rated 100-foot IR detection range was insufficient, so they also bought one PoE IR illuminator, installed it under the eaves near one of the cameras, and ran an Ethernet cable back to the comm center. They’re going to try that one camera with and without the supplementary IR illuminator and see how much difference it makes. If it greatly increases the range, they’ll install seven more IR illumintors, one per camera.

They’ll power the illuminators with an old 8-port Ethernet hub, of which they have several. They also bought a low-end BPS that should run the cameras, DVR, and illuminator for a long time on battery. The comm center is near their solar power charge controller and battery bank, so in a grid-down situation they’d be able to power their surveillance gear indefinitely.

I’m looking forward to hearing how that all works. They spent a fair amount on all the gear, but getting a smaller system costs only a few hundred dollars and would be a useful security supplement.

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Tuesday, 27 June 2017

08:30 – It was 58.9F (15C) when I took Colin out at 0715, sunny and breezy. Half an hour later, it was already up to 68.0F (20C). Barbara is volunteering at the Friends of the Library bookstore this afternoon. This morning, we’re doing science kit stuff.

There was a disturbing article in the Winston paper yesterday morning, with a followup article this morning. There was a home invasion in Lewisville, an exurban area not far from where we used to live. It occurred in the wee small hours. The outcome was better than might be expected. None of the home’s residents were injured, thanks largely to a neighbor with an “assault rifle” who shot and killed one of the would-be invaders. Details are still lacking, but it appears that because of North Carolina’s Castle Doctrine the neighbor won’t be charged. The police are withholding the names of the would-be victims because the rest of the home invaders are still at large.

Barbara’s made it about halfway through season eight of CSI:NY, and should be able to finish watching it over the next couple of days. I browsed around the current offerings of BritBox yesterday, and it looks to be worth the $7/month subscription. There’s a lot of stuff there that’s never made it to US television or streaming. Some of it is probably mediocre, but the Brits on average do pretty good TV series.

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Sunday, 18 June 2017

08:55 – It was 68.1F (20C) when I took Colin out around 0715 this morning, mostly cloudy. Barbara is cleaning house this morning. This afternoon we’ll be working on science kit stuff.

I spent some time yesterday preparing for the ham radio exams I’m taking this coming week. I did the Technician class sample exams 30 or 40 times. I scored 33/35 once, 34/35 a few times, and 35/35 on all the others. Passing is 26/35, so I’d estimate I have a >99% chance of passing the Tech exam, which is all I really care about. I’ll run through the General Class sample exams several more times over the next couple of days. Right now, I’m averaging 31/35 or so on them, which I estimate gives me a >80% of passing that one without further study. If I pass, I pass. If not, I’m not going to worry about it. As long as I can work 2M and 70 cm, I’m happy. I have no real interest in DX, and no interest at all in building a ham shack or pursuing ham radio as a hobby. Been there, done that.

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Saturday, 17 June 2017

09:18 – Colin let me sleep in this morning. It was 67.2F (19.5C) when I took him out around 0730 this morning, mostly cloudy and with a light misty drizzle. Barbara’s friend Bonnie from Winston is coming up this morning. They’re going to spend the day driving around the county visiting various arts/crafts places.

I got some chemicals for science kits on order yesterday, a gallon (3.8 L) each of n-butanol, 99% acetic acid, and 28% ammonia. The total was $161, including shipping, or $6.71/pint. I could order this stuff from a lab chemical vendor, but lab-grade versions of any of these would typically cost 50% to 100% more, not including shipping.

If possible, we avoid technical-grade chemicals. This vendor carries tech-grade, but it also offers many chemicals in either repackaged USP (pharma-grade) or FCC (food-grade) versions, which are pure enough for our purposes.

The other issue is hazardous-material shipping. Many vendors, including Fisher Sci, simply refuse to ship hazardous chemicals to anything but a business address, but these guys will happily ship to a home address.

Which is probably just as well. Soon after we started the business, I ordered a bunch of hazardous chemicals and had them delivered to our house in Winston. The total amount was probably a couple liters of liquid and maybe two or three kilos of solids.

A few days later, Malcolm barked ferociously at a loud noise out front. It was a tractor-trailer emblazoned with hazmat placards parking in front of our house. The guy got out of the tractor and started placing orange cones to block off the street to all traffic, and finally unloaded a couple medium size boxes. I’m sure that got the whole neighborhood talking.

I spent some time yesterday going through the material for the Technician-class amateur radio exam and repeatedly taking the practice exam at HamExam.org. I’m now at the point where usually I score 35/35, with a few 34/35 thrown in. Passing is 26/35, so I shouldn’t have any problem with that test.

Truth be told, the Tech license is all I care about, but I figured I might as well take the General exam as well as long as I’m there. So I’ll spend some time over the weekend and early next week going over the General-class material and taking the practice exams for it.

When I first signed up for the ham radio course, the guy instructing it mentioned that there was another ham locally who was interested in starting an ARES group. The Amateur Radio Emergency Service is intended to help provide comms to local emergency services and law enforcement during emergencies.

After reading more about ARES, I decided not to bother with it. For one thing, they expect you to “register” your radio equipment and skills, and I have no interest in registering anything with the government or an auxiliary agency. For another, they expect you to respond to emergencies outside your immediate area.

So I think I’ll try to get an unofficial local group going that will support only Alleghany County and Sparta emergency services. That fits well with the mind-set around here anyway. We have a local ham radio club, but it has zero official presence. No membership roster, no dues, no officers, no rules, etc.

While Barbara was volunteering at the historical society yesterday afternoon, the Sheriff stopped in to say hello. There wasn’t anyone else there, so he and Barbara spent a long time talking. She said he’s a really nice guy.

So I think I’ll see how many members of the ham radio club are interested in volunteering to provide emergency comms and then talk to the Sheriff and other local people involved with emergency management and see what we can get going informally.

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Saturday, 10 June 2017

09:49 – It was 53.7F (12C) when I took Colin out around 0630 this morning, bright and breezy. Lately, between the time I get up and when Barbara gets up, the outside temperature increases by roughly 20F (11C). It’s already up to 73F (22C). This morning, Barbara is headed outside to plant day lilies of along both sides of the driveway.

Barbara’s sister, Frances, quit her job yesterday. She simply couldn’t take the work environment any more. Like nearly all large organizations, her former employer treats its employees like interchangeable pegs. I told Barbara it reminded me of her 20 years ago, when the library system just got to be too much for her. The stress level was incredibly high and I kept encouraging her just to quit, just as Al has been encouraging Frances to quit. Stress kills, and the effects on Frances now and Barbara then were obvious to those close to her. Like Barbara then, Frances’s mindset was to hold on until retirement. I told Barbara then that she might not live to retire if she stayed with the library system for another 20 years. For Frances, it’d have been more like 10 years, but even that was too much to bear.

So Frances is now devoting full time to looking for another job, ideally with a small local company rather than a corporate behemoth. I mentioned to Barbara last night that I’d been convinced for decades that the secret was to work for yourself. She said she’d mentioned that to Frances, but that wasn’t an option for many reasons.

As I’ve said before, there are two types of people when it comes to making a living. When one type, by far the most common, loses or quits a job, their first thought is to go out and start looking for another job. The first thought of the other type is to go into business for themselves.

The first type worry about security, and consider working for someone else to be more secure than working for themselves. The second type recognize that there is no security in working for someone else, and there hasn’t been for decades. I’m obviously in that latter group, but I recognize that not everyone is.

And going into business for yourself isn’t the risk that it once was. Nowadays, with the Internet, you can go into business incrementally, building a business on eBay or Amazon. I talk to people all the time who’ve done this. Many of them treat their businesses as part-time jobs that they work in addition to their full-time jobs. They may work part-time on their businesses for months or even years, but eventually most of them end up quitting their day jobs and devoting full time to their own businesses.

For example, in our first full month of selling science kits, we had only $1,100 in gross revenue and a hugely negative cash flow. But within a couple of years that business was generating a middle-class income.

I’m convinced that there are two tricks to starting a successful business. First, you need a unique product, whether it’s merchandise or a service. If you’re selling something generic, it’s a race to the bottom and you’ll eventually end up selling your product for just slightly more than it costs to produce. Second, you want to sell on the Internet to customers all over the country. That isolates you from local economic problems. Even if things are bad locally, you can continue to sell to customers elsewhere, which isn’t an option if you have a local brick-and-mortar business.

Actually, there’s a third trick. Always be looking for new potential revenue streams, whether related to your business or not. That’s related to the entrepreneurial mindset. In the past when we’ve had a slow period, Barbara would sometimes worry that people had just stopped buying science kits. My response was always that things would pick up, which they always do, but even if they didn’t that wouldn’t be a problem because I’d just start doing something else to make money.

So, I’d encourage Frances to continue looking for a new job, but while she’s doing that I’d also encourage her to start thinking about starting her own business. Maybe spend an hour or two every day and more on weekends building her business and then just see what happens. Worst case, it won’t go anywhere. If that happens, she can try Plan B. But best case, she’d find her own business growing, eventually to the point where she could quit her day job and work full-time for herself.

We’re back at a decent stocking level on the small chemistry kits. Yesterday, we made up 24 regulated and 13 unregulated chemical bags for the full chemistry kits, which were the limiting quantities for the bottled chemicals we had on hand. We’ll use those today to get 13 additional full chemistry kits built. The next task to to build 40 regulated chemical bags and 20 unregulated chemical bags for biology kits, with those numbers again determined by limiting quantities of one or more bottled chemicals per bag.

We’re about a third of the way through the month, and kit sales revenues are already more than 100% of June 2016, with total YTD revenues running slightly ahead of last year’s.

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